Nina D. Burleigh (born 1959 or 1960)[1] is an American writer and journalist.[2] She is the author of five books, including Mirage: Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt (2007), about the scholars who accompanied Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798; Unholy Business (2008), chronicling a Biblical archaeological forgery case and the Jerusalem relic trade; and The Fatal Gift of Beauty (2011), on the overturned conviction of American student Amanda Knox, who was tried in Italy in 2009 for the murder of Meredith Kercher. She also writes a column for The New York Observer called "The Bombshell".[3]

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Born in Chicago to University of Chicago professors, Burleigh's family moved to the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco when she was seven. After a few months in San Francisco, they moved to Baghdad to live with Burleigh's maternal grandmother. Six months later the family moved to an Amish area of Michigan.[4] Her first publication was for a library in Elgin, Illinois, when she was in sixth grade.[5] "In college I thought I might go into fiction writing, but a professor of mine…suggested I could get paid as a journalism intern at the Illinois Statehouse, through a program called the Public Affairs Reporting Program. I got an internship at the Associated Press, and learned a lot about government and writing journalism there”.[4]

A fourth-generation atheist, Burleigh stated that her family had "rejected institutional religion" by the time she grew up in the 1970s. "No baptism, no family Bible recording the births, deaths and marriages. My grandfather actively despised churches." They always celebrated Christmas with Santa and a tree, which she calls "culturally Christian." When her son was a toddler, Burleigh thought it might be a good idea to expose her child to church. She picked out the most picturesque one she could find in her town and visited. She discovered that the inside was very beautiful with stained glass windows, but the programs she picked up changed her mind, they were "urging parishioners to contact their lawmakers about fetal rights, gay marriage and other favorite fundamentalist issues. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I gathered up the toddler, who was fascinated by the place and didn't want to leave, and scurried back into daylight."[6]

Burleigh has written extensively on feminism, issues of human trafficking,[16] domestic violence,[17] and double standards for violence against women,[18][19] American women and power and politics.[20][21][22] She coined the term "Baby Palins” to refer to the young right wing women who decry feminism while benefiting from its gains.[23][24] She has written that "misogyny is the last allowable taboo in our PC world".[25][26] She has also written on women and health care and reproductive law[27][28] as well as the issues and complications of adoption.[29][30][31]

Burleigh spent several years working on a book about Biblical archaeology and forgery in Israel. The Wall Street Journal said, “Burleigh uses the story of the James Ossuary to trace the eccentric and sometimes dodgy characters who buy, trade and deal in antiquities. But it is also a springboard for her larger meditation on the field of biblical archaeology. In the 19th century, when the discipline emerged, practitioners saw themselves as both religious pilgrims and serious scholars, perceiving no potential for conflict in their desire to prove the historicity of the Bible. It has only been in recent decades that biblical archaeology truly widened its scope and began to focus not only on the Bible but on the larger world in which biblical events unfolded.”[34]

In a 1998 essay for Mirabella, Burleigh described noticing that, while aboard Air Force One during her time as a White House correspondent for Time magazine, President Bill Clinton found her attractive. That same year, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post reported her as saying of Clinton: "I'd be happy to give him [oral sex] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal."[43] Burleigh herself described the quote as follows.

"When he called back, I decided my only defense would be to give him a quote that would knock his socks off. I also wanted to test the Post‘s new “sizzle”-the paper’s post-We Broke the Lewinsky Story advertising hook. So when Howard asked whether I could still objectively cover the President, having found him so attractive, I replied, “I would be happy to give him a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their Presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs.”" [44]

Referring to the comment in a 2007 piece for The Huffington Post, Burleigh wrote, "I said it (back in 1998, but a good quote has eternal life) because I thought it was high time for someone to tweak the white, middle-aged beltway gang taking Clinton to task for sexual harassment. These men had neither the personal experience nor the credentials to know sexual harassment when they saw it, nor to give a good goddamn about it if they did. The insidious use of sexual harassment laws to bring down a president for his pro-female politics was the context in which I spoke."[45]

Burleigh has written about her visits to Iraq, her mother's country of birth, both as a child and later in life as a journalist.[46] Her father is author Robert Burleigh.[47] She is married to Erik Freeland, a photographer. They and their two children live in New York City.[48]

The Stranger and the Statesman: James Smithson, John Quincy Adams and the Making of America's Greatest MuseumISBN 0-06-000241-7

Mirage: Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt (2007) ISBN 978-0060597689 about Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. Selected by The New York Times as an editors' choice[49] and by Delta Kappa Gamma Society International for the 2008 Educator's Award.[50]